This invention relates to data center cooling, and more particularly to a system and a method to increase cooling efficiency without the use of vapor compression refrigeration.
The energy consumed by data centers has doubled over the past six year and is predicted to keep increasing at the same rate. Up to forty percent of the power consumed by data centers is used to cool them to an optimum operating temperature. Current systems using vapor compression refrigeration require significant amounts of energy to operate.
Recent trends to reduce energy have resulted in systems using only liquid circulation to transfer the heat out of the server. These systems pump the liquid containing heat from the servers through outdoor heat exchangers that allow the heat to dissipate into the outdoor air. The cool liquid is circulated back into to server where it is used to cool the air circulating in the server and to directly cool server components. However, these systems still require large amount of power to operate the pump and fans.